Page 16 of Never Dare a Duke
And they both knew it would be a feeble attempt. He had spent his adult life working too hard.
The duchess looked away, almost as if with hesitation.
Christopher casually rested an elbow on the desk. “Out with it, Mother.”
“Sadly, we are not so far removed from London here that we can avoid the dark mutterings of rumors.”
He arched a brow. “Surely we are used to those. It cannot be my cousin, Daniel, causing problems. His marriage has surely settled him.”
“I am not so sure of that,” she said, a smile twinkling in her eyes before she sobered. “But no, it is not Daniel. It is Madeleine Preston.”
Christopher leaned his head back against his wingback chair and sighed. “What has she done now?”
“She is rather open in her pursuit of you, is she not?”
“She is. So I am grateful that you did not invite her.”
“Yet you feel guilty,” she answered shrewdly.
“How could I not? Her brother is my good friend.”
“And he wouldn’t want you to consider his sister just because of that friendship.”
“Butshewants me to,” Christopher said darkly.
“I knew she was using your past against you,” his mother said.
“Mother, please do not worry. I have made it clear, as gently as possible, that I am not interested in marrying her, regardless of how she believes we’re connected.” He held up a hand when she would have interrupted. “But if it makes you feel better, I will write to Michael and enlist his help with his sister.”
She studied him a moment too long but only nodded instead of saying more. His mother had always been good at letting him run his own life—until his need for a bride had become too much for her. He went to her and kissed her cheek, still regretting the sorrow he’d put her through when he was young.
“I will make a good choice,Madre,” he said softly.
“Soon?”
“Soon. But probably not this week.”
She smiled and patted his chest. “Then can you not enjoy yourself with our guests?”
“I will, I promise. But not every moment of every day. And you cannot make me hunt for imaginary ghosts,” he added, pretending sternness. “Whatever gave Elizabeth such a crazy—”
“She is young, Christopher.”
And if that was the most foolish thing his sister did in her youth, then she had him bested.
Though Abigail had stayed awake far too late, writing down every conversation and conclusion she’d drawn from the evening, she made sure that she was, but for the servants, the first person up in the morning. She wore a front-buttoning gown, so she wouldn’t need the assistance of a maid at dawn. She wanted to be alone in the dining room for breakfast, the better to begin her casual interviewing of the servants. Luckily, Miss Bury was an easy chaperone, who seemed to assume that her presence somewhere in the household was enough to make her charges behave.
But while guests came and went through the morning, planning their ghost-hunting strategies, haunting the library to look for old family histories, or already writing home about the intriguing house-party theme, Abigail grew more and more discouraged. No matter how cleverly she worded her questions, how brainless she made herself appear to ease suspicions, she could not persuade a single servant to speak about the Cabot family. From the footmen at breakfast to the maid sweeping out the coal grates to the laundress to whom Abigail took a stained gown, no one had anything to say. Of course their livelihoods depended on the Cabots, but Abigail was good at seeing beneath a veneer to the truth behind words. To her, it seemed they had absolutely nothing to complain about and loved working for this “perfect” family.
How could they be so perfect? Abigail had done her research. The current duke’s grandfather had neglected his children so much in pursuit of expanding his fortune that all of their marriages had created scandals. One daughter had married a poor composer and been accused of killing him for a symphony; another had married a professor caught up in an anatomy scandal with corpses; and the duke’s father had fallen in love with a common Spanish girl, thumbing his nose at Society’s expectations for a duke’s marriage.
Yet although she had received hints of squabbling among the family, it seemed they all treated their servants so well that they inspired great loyalty. And normally Abigail would admire that. But it did not help her investigation.
The duke was obviously not going to take the ghost hunting seriously because Abigail never saw him throughout the morning. She’d overheard that he had meetings with his steward and several bailiffs of neighboring properties. Yet he put in an appearance at luncheon—probably for his mother’s sake.
From across the room, Abigail watched the way the Ladies May and Theodosia latched on to the duke from both sides. They were opposite in temperament, the first demanding and emotional, the second more reserved and mature, but they were after the same thing and did not seem to care who knew it.
Why should Abigail feel sorry for him? He had a perfect, comfortable future all laid out before him. He could choose whomever he wanted as a wife, while Abigail might be forced to marry a man she didn’t love. She would have a boring life she didn’t want, and only this story could save her from that.
